The Weakness, the Precious
by Coppelia Martyrdom
Summary: Seventy years only came to far less than a fourth of his long lifetime, but now Hiei could not shake the distinction that seventy years equaled a human's life-span. For Mina ukefied on LJ.


When Hiei finishes his patrol duty in Demon World, he says a temporary goodbye to Mukuro. She laughs and asks him where he's going in that way she already knows, just like all of the questions she has given him before. Because he does not like the idea of speaking the ridiculous notion he has on mind, he tells in that katana-edged voice of his, "Hmph. I'll be back." Except Hiei forgets one note, or maybe he doesn't care: by not saying _when_ he will back, despite his ever rogue mindset, he reveals and confirms the location for her that she already knows - just like all the snake-tongued comments he's given her before.

He leaves the room, and she does too, and she watches from partly behind a column of the traveler bug as he opens the door to the Living World.

* * *

  
Yusuke has come back in his time gone. Somehow, Hiei is not surprised. He has married the girl. This Hiei is not surprised about either, but he's far less impressed. The three idiots – Yusuke, the Fox, and Kuwabara – greet him as if it was an ordinary day back in town for him, except Hiei makes it known, to avoid the question of why he came to visit in the first place, that he will return to Mukuro soon enough.

Hiei has the intent not to greet Yukina this time and instead simply watch her from afar, but nonetheless she manages to learn of his return. She travels from Genkai's temple to Yusuke's new apartment just to see him. While they are gathered there, he learns through startling, sudden means that the Fool is dating her, and Hiei draws his katana to kill, but unfortunately Yusuke and Kurama hold him off. The Fool remains oblivious about this exchange despite how he stares as it happens, and the bloodlust within Hiei only increases by the second.

The old woman chastises Yusuke and regards Hiei with the familiar gruffness. Yusuke's girl extends minor attempts at a friendship, but Hiei is not the socializing type and for the most part he can see she does not want much reconciliation after his kidnapping her. The unfocused ferry woman goes about her usual, irritatingly energetic way, and more often than not he has to tune her out for several minutes when she starts talking.

He does not dare admit his nostalgia and surprise at fitting into the same dull routine of his relationships in the Human World. He keeps these feelings entirely to himself, and yet Kurama could read his mind for all he knew. "Feeling right at home, Hiei?" the Fox teases, and for the third time that day Hiei's need to kill rises in his stomach.

"Tch," he responds, "don't flatter yourself, Kurama. You and the rest of the fools I'll be rid of soon, once I return to Demon World."

But year after year passes, and for an unknown reason, Hiei cannot bring himself to leave.

* * *

  
A large crowd, a mix of both humans and demons sympathetic to Yusuke, attends the girl's funeral. Hiei joins Kurama, the elderly Fool, and Yukina at first simply for the sake of appearances, but as he stands there in the winter cold he can barely feel, the smallest spark of remorse for the ex-Detective licks like a flame at his heart. He cannot help but watch, curious, as speeches are given and flowers are thrown onto the top of the funeral casket. When Kurama's human mother died several years ago, Hiei arrived near the end, and as such, decided to stay outside the cemetery gate until the procession finished. Now, he experienced these bizarre funeral customs with wide eyes and a frown and both hands tucked into the pockets of his tunic.

Afterward, the group of four drag themselves down the sidewalk to a bar they have visited several times before, and Yusuke's heavy breath is visible as puffs of fog in the chill. They stand a foot away from the bar's entrance. They are on the threshold, though it takes Hiei a moment to understand why. He recalls Yusuke's attitude during the funeral: sober and quiet but without clear grief or any long-standing changes in his clownish demeanor. Kuwabara will die in the next ten years at least, but himself, Yusuke, and Kurama are demons, destined to last centuries longer than any one human. The notion is strangely humbling.

They do not enter the bar. They stare at themselves in the window glass, but everyone's sight is far beyond it, Yusuke's especially. He looks normal, very normal, but at the same time this normalness incites the feeling that perhaps a chunk of him, a gear, has gone missing.

"Thanks for coming," he says to the people in the glass.

* * *

  
A day later, Hiei stands in almost the same spot as when he watched men lower Keiko's casket into the ground, but now he has moved back from that spot a meter. There is a larger turn-out for Yusuke's funeral as compared to Keiko's funeral, but Hiei could care less. Something unfamiliar has hollowed him out from the inside. In the minutes that several demons Yusuke has fought give their own words, a part of him feels as though he could tell Yukina with careless ease that he is her twin brother.

He does not understand. Why end your life for the girl, Detective? He asks the casket. Hiei _knows_ why, but he does not understand.

No one will bring him back from the dead this time.

And every second of the procession and the events after feel as though they are predestined, as though he has known, ever since he met Yusuke, that this exact thing would happen.

Still days later, the finality of everything permits life to return to practice; there is a gap Yusuke and his girl once occupied in Hiei's world, but otherwise, he continues on as usual.

* * *

  
The two funerals fresh on their minds, Kurama advises Hiei of the closeness between Kuwabara and Yukina. They have been dating on-and-off for the majority of Kuwabara's life, but that does not change the general fondness they hold of each other, much to Hiei's dismay. The tip causes something vile to crawl up his throat and his shoulders to tense in horror, though he's not sure whether his current assumptions are what Kurama intended to produce.

When Yukina sits alone that night on the porch of Genkai's house, Hiei approaches her with heavy footsteps. Yukina's expression lifts in surprise at finding the aloof and cold man willingly walking up to converse with her in the late evening, but this surprise soon vanishes, replaced by her genuine hello.

"When Kuwabara dies," he asks, "will you join him in the Spirit World like Yusuke?"

His sister's ruby eyes can only grow hard and grave in the dim.

"Kuwabara would not want me to," she admits, though she has revealed just one portion of the two sides that make up her mind on this matter. Hiei perceives this instantly, and his brows narrow then relax again.

"Don't follow the Fool." A couple flakes of snow drop to the earth. "For me."

The ungrounded openness of these last two words causes a breath to hitch in Yukina's throat, and she struggles to answer him, but he is already gone.

* * *

  
When he enters her chamber inside the traveler bug, every object, every passage appears brand new to him, even though he knows little has changed since he's been here. Mukuro stares at him with a half-amused, mostly blank expression and is quick to remind him that seventy-one years have passed since he left for Human World. She says this in a way not matter-of-fact or irritated, but with a prying, cat-like composure.

"I said I would be back," Hiei remarks. "Have you not the patience to wait only a human's lifetime?"

And unknown to him again, he has revealed crucial insights to her.


End file.
